This is a raw and a poignant work of art from the authors. The stories are truly heartbreaking and human, beautiful written to touch your soul. Absolutely a terrific work of a book.

It's always a joyful experience to read authors in translation. And Tove Ditlevsen is a brilliant one. She was a fine observer of human nature, and in particular of women(and children) life, their most hidden struggles and desires. And that's very evident in the first part of this collection which I believe was in itself a previous collection of short stories called The Umbrella. There is so much heartbreak and loneliness in this stories that it made me feel for the characters so deeply. Despite being just short stories, this character left their mark on me. It is extraordinary for an author to accomplish that in just a few pages, isn't it?!

The second part titled: The Trouble with Happiness is more of a mixed bag, as it usually happens with many collections of short stories. They cover a more broad spectrum, with many more fantastical elements. While I did enjoy them, they were not as visceral as the stories and the first collection, and left me wishing for more.

But that being said, I found this collection a very good one; and Ditlevsen a fascinating author that I would like to explore more.

It took me a long time to read these stories, mainly because I found them to be unremittingly bleak. They are all set around the home, and frankly make family life seem horrific. The husbands or fathers bully, abandon, or at best simply don't understand their wives and children. The wives for the most part simply accept this as their lot in life. I failed to connect with anyone in these stories. The writing is good, perhaps I simply read this at the wrong time.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

I read this nearly immediately after finishing The Copenhagen Trilogy by Ditlevsen, and wow - I’m glad I read them in that order! These short stories are so intertwined with Ditlevsen’s own experiences, and this in itself is fascinating to link each story to situations from her life. I highly recommend!

An unsettling collection of Scandi-domestic-noir short stories, mainly featuring unhappy women and unfeeling men. Husbands and wives are strangers to each other, homes are minefields, children are screwed up, happiness is always beyond reach.

The characters are often not named or described, and there’s little sense of time or place, and indeed little action - it’s mostly interiors and interiority. Despite this semblance of intimacy, the reader is kept at a distance by the sparse dispassionate style. Ditlevsen doesn’t try to elicit sympathy, and oddly enough the stories are more powerful for her matter-of-fact presentation. It’s like a film with no background music to indicate how you’re meant to feel - which can be a more raw and confronting experience than when you’re being played by a soundtrack.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t enjoy this volume to start with. I found it too cold, stark, nihilistic. The stories are very short so it’s easy to race through them, but the unrelenting unhappiness left me feeling even more sad and hopeless than usual. Then I found that the secret was only to read a small number of stories at a time, and slowly. I started to appreciate the nuance and the author’s craft much more then, and was glad I did.

Like Katherine Mansfield’s stories (which I love) they are mood pieces, glimpses of lives, snapshots - ie not much action or plot, just relationships and feelings. I say ‘just’ but relationships and feelings are the fabric of life after all, so why should a scene from, for instance, the life of a woman who tiptoes around her house for fear of waking her irritable / tyrannical husband who works nights be considered an insignificant subject? Once I’d adjusted to the micro narrative level and flat tone, I found these stories rich and poignant.

And then the final story, ‘The trouble with happiness’ - wow. It’s entirely different from what’s gone before, so just when you’ve got used to the clinical descriptions of nameless sorrowful others, there’s a very personal first person narrative, a complete tonal shift charged with huge emotional power that took this reader completely by surprise. The same themes of alienation and loss, but also a young woman taking charge of her life, becoming independent, succeeding as a writer - a master-stroke. I immediately wanted to go back and read the preceding stories again, and changed my view of this collection altogether. A bleak but ultimately rewarding read.

This review is based on an E-ARC from Penguin UK and NetGalley.

Even though I have the Copenhagen trilogy standing on my shelf, this is my first meeting with Tove Dietlevsen’s writing. And what a meeting it was!

“The trouble with happiness” is a collection of short stories that all tackle seemingly ordinary topics and conflicts, but a lot is lurking under the surface.

Dietlevsen combines ice cold Scandinavian minimalism with heavy symbolism.
A cat isn’t just a cat and an umbrella isn’t just an umbrella, they are rather used as means of control.

And the traditional female roles that women have historically been forced into is largely at the center of this collection.
Given the time period that these stories was written in, this is quite a powerful way to stand up to the patriarchy.

All in all this is a sharp collection of stories about desperation, anger and the seemingly impossible search for happiness.
I will be fast tracking her Copenhagen trilogy after this😀

The Trouble with Happiness brings together two short story collections from 1952 and 1963, translated into English for the first time. The title gives the game away - do not expect much pleasure, joy or happy endings. The stories depict failed or failing relationships, dysfunctional families and frequently human weakness. Of Hanne in the story, The Little Shoes, it is said "It was as if a zone of loneliness had appeared around her" and this could be said of many of the stories protagonists. However, the stories are more truthful than depressing and precisely written. The later collection is more accomplished than the first but there is real consistency here and stories like The Knife and The Bird are unsettling and strangely moving. Recommended.

I think it's hard to separate the literary work from its' time, and with "The Trouble With Happiness" by Tove Ditlevsen the readers are transformed to the 1950s and 1960s, when this collection of short stories was created.

The stories about love, loss, disappointment, familial and marital relations feel melancholic, as well as a little eery at times, when the author explores the subjects of violence and intentional cruelty. Tove Ditlevsen is a very atmospheric writer and can encompass a lot in just a few pages.

However, as short stories collections go, there are pieces that are more engaging than others, making "The Trouble With Happiness" quite uneven. There are stories that feel masterful, and others are just passable.

I guess an awareness of the social context and the reality in which "The Trouble With Happiness" is immersed - mid-century Denmark (Copenhagen, to be precise), could massively improve the reader's experience and help appreciate Ditlevsen work and talent more, but I think it's a bit too much to ask.

The Trouble with Happiness: and Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen Goodreads review


I got The Trouble with Happiness: and Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen, for free from NetGalley for a fair and honest review.

The Trouble with Happiness: and Other Stories by as the title suggest is a collection of short stories by, Tove Ditlevsen, a celebrated Danish writer, who better known for her poetry.
This collection of stories examines how sometimes when we get the things that gave us happiness, can also lead to the greatest disappointments.
For example, the story of the girl who wants an umbrella to a child going to stay with her father for the weekend after a divorce.
What I really liked about these stories although, they seem to have the same feel of fairy tales with the strong moral tones of the classic stories of another Danish storyteller Hans Christian Anderson.
This may seem to be more of the case as they were originally published in the 1970’s giving them some sort of an historical quality that books which were contemporary at the time have gained due to how long ago they were published.
All this makes The Trouble With Happiness by Tove Ditlevsen well worth reading for both its themes and its time in history.

I really wanted to like these short stories (recently translated from Danish for rerelease into the world decades after they were written) and their sparse melancholy but I just found them all much too similar. Nothing really happens except emotion, and while that can be interesting in a little character study of a story, that was the basis of every story in the collection. Not bad in any way, just not my sort of thing. This was made worse by the fact that the ARC was formatted quite poorly meaning that, because the stories were so narratively similar, it was really hard to tell where one ended and the best began.

This is a beautiful yet terrifying collection of short stories about relationships and families. Don’t let that put you off. It is bleak but brilliant and written in a sparing style which makes it all the more haunting. It’s not heartwarming , it’s desperately sad. But go and read it and I will go and read everything else Tove Ditlevsen wrote.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

Unfortunately this proof copy was extremely difficult to read. The formatting was terrible and any words containing the letters “fi” or “ff” were left without those letters, making for puzzling reading a lot of the time. There was also no indication as to when one story ended, and the next one began, which is very off putting in a short story collection. For these reasons, I had to abandon the book three stories in as it was too confusing and frustrating to continue.

Let me start by saying I love the title of the book and I know how the melancholic, sad stories might deter some. These are not uplifting and heart warming stories and they might even feel heart breaking but they feel so genuine and the writing is so beautiful and hope many would consider reading it.

TOVE DITLEVSEN – THE TROUBLE WITH HAPPINESS **

I read this novel in advance of publication through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Being a lover of short stories, this is a book for which I had high hopes. Turns out it was written back in the 50’s and 60’s and has just been translated. Quite why, I’m not sure. For me it was one of the most dull and uninteresting books I have read in a long while.

I am sure that many people will love it: it is just not for me. And of all the dozens of books I have reviewed so far, I’ve never had to say that. It’s not badly written, as in an amateurish way, which is why I gave it two stars, but I found the dense style turgid – a lump of prose that conveyed no emotions and was full of mundane detail. I don’t see the point in saying any more. Life is too short.

Unfortunately this book wasn't for me. That's not to say its not a great book, it may well be to readers who have read books by this author already but I just didn't connect with it I'm afraid. It is very different to what I normally read and as another person mentioned, there were a lot of errors in the text and layout which I understand comes with reading an advanced copy but it was a little off putting at how much there was, sometimes I was unable to make out what a word should be. I hate to leave negative reviews and this isn't necessarily negative, just me saying it's not for me, sorry.

3.5 stars rounded up.

I really enjoyed the first few stories in this collection. The Umbrella was my favourite of all of them, but I also really enjoyed The Cat, My Wife Doesn't Dance and His Mother. The writing is assured and focuses on the small moments of life where things become clear, when secrets are revealed, or when character's innermost feelings become known to them - turning points that are miniscule, not a result of earth-shattering events.

However, there was an overall depressing tone to many of the stories - there were a few where the core metaphors didn't quite work for me. The second half wasn't as enjoyable to read for me, and of the stories of the second half I only really liked The Knife, The Mother and the final and titular story The Trouble With Happiness.

Still, for lovers of astutely observed characters and stories that pay close attention to the inner lives of often overlooked characters these stories are certainly worth a read.

I would be keen to read more from this author.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

After reading and enjoying the authors three part autobiography, I was interested in picking up her short story collection. The strength of her work lies in her voice and subject matter. Primarily she was a poet who published 10 Poetry collections and this is clearly visible in her work. She displays a poet's ear, uses concise and precise prose displaying a sense of humour and vulnerability. The stories are realistic and beautiful with no happy endings, revealing the masks we wear to cover up our immaturity. The theme of individuals not really connecting is prevalent throughout the stories whether parent and child, employee and employer or husband and wife. She skilfully illustrates the impossible situation of individuals wanting or expecting other to meet them in their reality and being surprised or resentful when that doesn't happen. As in her 3 part memoir Childhood, Youth, Dependency, she delivers a message of compassion and solidarity. We deserve to be kinder to ourselves and to each other.

A stunning collection of some of the bleakest short stories about the human condition I have read in a long time. Ditlevesen turns an eagle eye on domestic relationships, looking at the rift between thought and feeling and social interaction and mining a rich seam of human misery and disconnect where there should be connection. This was not an easy read, because her acute perception is not merciful at all. Nobody, except the children she writes about get any real pity here and the fact that the children are exempt makes these essays all the more cutting. There is a lot of unhappiness in this book and it is brilliant and terrible.

Celebrated Danish writer, Tove Ditlevsen was known for mining her own life to fuel her creative work, from her novels to her poetry, and these newly-translated stories are no exception. This edition brings together her pieces from The Umbrella first published in 1952 and The Trouble with Happiness from 1963. They’re difficult to read, not because the style’s particularly challenging, but because her outlook’s so unrelentingly, convincingly, bleak. There’s an overwhelming sense of desolation running right through these: all focused on scenes and episodes from domestic life, families, parents and children enmeshed in forms of everyday, emotional destruction. Ditlevsen’s fascination with the minutiae of people’s relationships, and women’s inner worlds, made her popular with female readers but led to her dismissal by many of the prominent male critics of her time, not surprising I suppose, since men are by far the most dangerous creatures represented here: fathers who fantasize about emotionally tormenting their children; men who delight in casual cruelty or who blithely abandon their wives, mistresses or children to poverty and deprivation.

Ditlevsen’s ability to convey the full horrors of what it is to be isolated and disillusioned matches that of Jean Rhys’s, while her more abstract later stories, like The Method, resembled aspects of Anna Kavan’s troubled perspective. Ditlevsen’s prose’s remarkably disciplined, her style often understated, predominantly lucid, and her imagery’s sometimes marvellously vivid - even in the more sketch-like entries such as A Nice Boy one of a handful told from a child’s perspective, a beautifully-realised depiction of alienation and anxiety. Ditlevsen’s characters seem to fall into two camps the oppressed or the oppressive, people grappling with moments of realisation, confronted with their basest desires or slowly resigning themselves to the harsh realities of their suffocating existence. These are stories of petty tyranny, sudden betrayals, deceit, thwarted longings, and loss of love, all meticulously observed. Most are grounded in working-class Danish society or in middle-class families in crisis, reflecting Ditlevsen’s own background, although her occasional forays into exploring wealthier families show acute loneliness as present in all walks of life. There are entries that are a little slight, and others that overlap with each other too much and would’ve benefited from further editing, but these are essentially quibbles, overall, I thought this was an extremely impressive collection, although possibly best dipped into, than read straight through. Translated from the Danish by Michael Favala Goldman.

These modernist short stories have a melancholic air, shifting between domestic settings and a more figurative level where an umbrella, for example, becomes a stand-in for longed for desires. I didn't always find it easy to enter the stories: something about the style or possibly the translation left me feeling like an observer rather than being on the inside of the tales - but that's personal preference.